The waiting game

In the 24 hours since the commencement ceremony ended, I've thought a lot about a few things.

First of all, good God it's warm. Potsdam's errant weather never ceases to amaze me. How we're all surviving here, despite the threat of pneumonia and bronchitis, I'll never know. We've probably built some superhuman tolerance to sudden weather changes, in which case-- bring on global warming. Insert sarcmark here.

I've also thought about our natural defenses against things like heat and emotions. When it's too hot, we struggle for a few minutes and then make atmospheric changes. We either physically remove a layer of clothing or utilize some method of cooling, like a pool or a cold shower, or we change the way the air itself feels with fans and air conditioners. In essence, we manipulate our surroundings until they're comparative to our personal preferences.

Emotionally, we do the same. If someone makes us sad when we do not want to be, we figure out some way to change the way we're feeling. We can be reproachful and vengeful, forcing our antagonists to feel what we're feeling. We can also change the way we're feeling, alleviating the sadness with different impetuses that make us happy. Music, for instance, or a change in scenery.

What happens when we don't have a grasp on any of it? It's easy to encourage people to take control of their situations, but what if these situations are formless? wispy? impossible to see?

The graduation of a few characters in my personal history meant various weighted things. I would no longer have to see them or endure their particular brand of torture, and I'm glad for that, but it also meant that I'll never see them again and I'll never be able to endure their particular brand of torture. It took me all weekend, a few pots of coffee, and some serious alone time to conclude that I was holding onto terrible memories because they were the last tangible connections I had with these people. They were the only things I had left that I could curl up in and feel some sense of familiarity, even though they were the starring roles in virtually every sleepless night.

I was waiting for this release. Now that the pressure is gone and the horrible sinking feeling I had during the ceremony is starting to dissipate, I've realized that the aforementioned emotional baggage was there the whole time, but it was masquerading as something else. I can finally see the situation that I need to change, and in being able to see it, I can finally--and utterly--fix things for myself.

I will miss him. God, I'll miss him. But it's time for him to be out of my life. There are so many things that I would like to say to him, but in the end, it's better that I don't. For his sake and for anyone else's sake who may be caught in the crossfire.

The point of this post was to elaborate on my theory about our natural defenses and how they're all linked, working on one another like the wellness continuum, but this is a good place to stop. When I'm not as mentally exhausted, I'll pick this topic back up and run with it again and see how far I get.

Just remember: never let anyone tell you what you're feeling. They're wrong. If you're upset about something, don't try to ignore. You'll be buried by the invisible tormentors in the end. That's how therapists make so much money, after all-- it takes a massiveass metaphorical shovel to dig through all the crap we let accumulate because it isn't vogue to deal with our problems.

Deal, people, and immediately. I waited a year too long.

I thought it was clever

I've been thinking about my major lately. Nothing overly deep (anything deeper than what I need to know for finals is life-threatening), but it led to this gem:

I don't really believe in absolutes, but I tend toward the affirmative. According to most, I'm not really a writer, either, because I'm not published. To them, I say: I am absolutely a writer, tending toward the rebellious.

You can't stop me. Nyah.

That's what I made my new Tumblr account's "about the author" section. It's a thought I've let jockey around my skull for a while.


I'm also pretty impressed with my Tumblr's title: (a)Muse in[g] Training

I wanted to use 'Prose Without a Cause' but I wasn't willing to deviate too far from the source. This blog has a place in my heart, after all, and I don't want to risk stressing it out. It's hard to stake claims there nowadays.

Oh yea. I'm using FeedBurner now, too-- I'm clueless about how it works, so if you're savy, lend me a hand? I'm sure it does more than just make RSS feeds easier for Tumblr to process.

"I'm not just someone's fallback plan!"

roared the sycophant.

I rant today about something that has plagued me, and probably you, since exploiting sexuality became the primary objective on everyone's mind. I'm not talking about sexual preference, stereotypes, gender roles or bigotry. That would be easier to dissect, actually, and I wouldn't be nearly as aggravated.

Sex is fun. Sex is useful. Sex is dangerous, can cause problems and it changes relationships forever. In a community of people where sex is in high demand but in short supply, it is only natural that people will become territorial about it. About who they are having sex with, about how many people they've managed to sleep with, and about how often they engage the act on a weekly (daily?) basis. I won't slip in the mud of sanctity or virtue for this particular post, though I do have opinions about both and how they relate to sex. Instead, I'm just musing about the carnal urges that usually instigate pain.

Let's face it-- while we're here in college, we aren't really looking for love. We're looking for someone who will let us rant to them about professors and assignments, someone who will be there when everyone else abandons us; we want a confidant and a partner in crime who will help us manage a hectic college lifestyle. We also want someone who we know will, undeniably and without any effort, put out when we want it.

So what's the big deal? We all fit into those categories somehow, whether we choose to believe it or not, and it's certainly attainable (I realize that I'm taking huge liberties with the royal we, so if you don't actually fit into these categories, bear with me. I'm making a point, I promise).

I'm not saying that I don't want these things, either, by writing about them in a quasi-negative tone. We all experience heartache and some kind of emotional distress about the end of a relationship at some point, so I'm not suggesting that I have some kind of special awareness that other people aren't privy to.

I am, however, suggesting that people may be cleaving to the things that sex governs -- like their loneliness, for instance -- too strongly.

This thing I'm talking about, this collegiate romance, is a very lucrative offer that we as a community of people have unofficially proposed. It's ingrained now in everything that we do. We dress up to go out so that we can attract someone. We don't sit with people in the dining centers if we know it might jeopardize the way someone we are trying to attract might perceive us. We're hurt when we're spurned by someone, but not when physical things -- like excessive drinking -- threaten us all the time.

And this is what we base our central thoughts around. The bigger picture orbits the immediacy of our desires, keeping us locked into modes of success (we're having sex) or failure (we are not having sex).

In the end, what is really accomplished? We still manage to get by (we're all still here, after all!) and we learn something about ourselves throughout our various dalliances, but I think we're losing something. It reminds me of Burke's terministic screens theory: when we make one decision, we're blocking all of the other possible outcomes forever.

What would happen if we chose to do something based on a relationship that has more longevity instead?

Silly battles over territory, wrongful accusations and inconsistency probably wouldn't make the cut. Besides-- conversations are a lot less risky.